It's your chance to take a nostalgic trip on the Morecambe buses of yesteryear at the Vintage Bus Day later this month.
The Morecambe Vintage Bus Day on Sunday, May 19, will feature a display of dozens of classic buses which used to operate in the town. The Ribble Vehicle Preservation Trust is organising its tenth event, which will see preserved buses ranging in age from 1931 to 2004 in attendance.
They can be seen at the Mazuma Mobile Stadium, home of Morecambe Football Club, on the promenade, and there will also be free bus services on the vintage vehicles too, running from Heysham Village, Carnforth station, and Happy Mount Park.
There will also with open top tours, subject to good weather, while the popular Bare Circular service returns, with pickups from Bare Lane Station, stalls selling memorabilia and three mystery tours on vintage coaches.
All services are free, but attendees are asked to support the Trust by purchasing a programme, or making a donation.
The main theme of both the service and the display will be buses which operated with Ribble Motor Services, but other local operators will be represented, including Morecambe & Heysham, Barrow, Preston and Blackpool.
The Ribble Vehicle Preservation Trust is a bus preservation group which was set up 50 years ago. It is a registered charity which houses its collection at its own premises in West Lancashire.
The Trust take their buses out to public events so that everyone can enjoy the experience of travelling on old buses.
Ribble Motor Services was set up in 1919 and expanded rapidly during the 1920s and 1930s, when it was very much a sort after job being a bus driver or conductor with Ribble. By the 1950s it was one of the largest bus companies in the UK with more than 1300 buses and at its height of operations in 1956 it was reported to have carried 216,648,878 passengers that year.
Morecambe and Lancaster were home to two of its depots, one at Skerton, now Chelsea Mews and the other at South Road, now Little ASDA.
As part of the build up to deregulation and privatisation in the mid-1980s Ribble was split up and eventually the services in central Lancashire and north to Carlisle became part of Stagecoach with south Lancashire & Liverpool becoming Arriva and Transdev operation in East Lancashire.
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